I lay myself open to two charges when I say that the asylum 'debate' is the most shameful example of political and journalistic lying I have heard in 20 years as a reporter. The first, that I sound like a sententious saloon-bar berk, is unduckable and must be taken on the chin. The second is encapsulated by the rejoinder: what about the competition? It's ferocious, I grant you. But the merits of rival claimants cannot trump the pretence that we treat refugees decently. Since the early Nineties, grateful New Labour and Conservative politicians have been allowed to - encouraged to, in fact - get away with transparent falsehoods by media inspired by hatred of strangers (the far-Right press) and a credulous trust in authority (the BBC and ITN).

Last Sunday, Tony Blair and Giuliano Amato wrote in these pages of their detestation of 'the horrors illegal immigrants endure at the hands of the people traffickers' and promised, 'in all that we do, we will honour our obligation to provide protection to those fleeing persecution'.

It was an old, big lie, which was polished by Jack Straw at the European Union justice ministers conference in Stockholm on Thursday when he posed as a tough yet tender statesperson who wanted to be 'generous toward genuine refugees' while taking a 'tougher line' against economic migrants.

In a Westminster world where words have been yanked from their moorings to meaning, comprehension comes when you grasp that the truth is invariably the exact opposite of what is said. The leaders of the European Union have created people-trafficking gangs as surely as prohibition created bootleggers. Blair and Straw are doing everything they can to stop 'genuine refugees' finding sanctuary. As for economic migrants, we love them for their labour and taxes.

The 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees allows the victims of political oppression to claim shelter in safe countries. Britain has been subverting its enlightened principles for years. Whenever conflicts begin, the Home Office imposes visa restrictions on the suffering countries. The persecuted who are running from Saddam Hussein or the Taliban cannot travel to Britain legally unless they have a visa.

But, and here is where the Home Office shows its slyness, we don't give visas to those who say they want asylum or are suspected by embassies of thinking of claiming asylum. As a result, authentic refugees can be slandered as 'illegal immigrants' when they arrive at Dover.

To make sure they get the message, Britain and her European allies fine the owners of planes, trains, ships, cars and lorries if they carry passengers who don't have visas. Last week the last breach in the walls was plugged when France agreed to allow British immigration officers on to the Eurostar. The various News at Tens reported the restrictions as a blow against illegal immigrants without explaining why the aliens were illegal or noting that genuine victims of persecution were among their number. I suppose I've no right to be shocked after all these years.

Desperate people take desperate measures. For want of legal means of travel, refugees have turned to smugglers and visa forgers whose businesses have been boosted by Blair and his colleagues. Not everything is going the gangsters' way. Britain now receives the greatest number of asylum applications in Europe because the far greater flow of millions from the former Yugoslavia, most of whom went to Germany, has been stemmed by the Kosovo campaign (for which the PM can take credit) and the fall of Milosevic.

The keepers of Fortress Europe remain frustrated, however, and plan to get rougher still. The French are proposing that carriers who allow undocumented refugees to travel should be fined and then made to return them to the point of embarkation. Straw, meanwhile, is demanding mass expulsions.

His hope that refugees seeking a home in Europe could be forced to live in camps in the Third World, while interior ministries decide whether they would accept them, puzzled observers. Why on earth would dirt-poor countries, which already have to look after the majority of the world's refugees, cooperate?

The short answer is that they will be bullied and bribed into compliance. Last year the European Union signed a new Lomé convention with the nations of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. They were compelled to accept the repatriation of people 'illegally present' in Europe - as asylum seekers tend to be - or lose £8.5 billion in aid and trade. The victims of the world's greatest crimes will either be sent back to face their local police chiefs or confined behind wire in neighbouring states. (The EU has told the Turks that it will finance the building of internment camps for refugees who come into their territory and promised the persecutors of the Kurds that the jails would not be troubled by UN inspectors.)

Straw will soon be free to engage in gesture politics. If a celebrity reporter finds a wounded girl with a cute face in the next Sarajevo, I'm sure she will be rushed to Great Ormond Street Hospital. If the cameras aren't there, I suspect compassion will evaporate. When you put their cruelties to the political class, you are often treated to a bluff lecture on pragmatism. We agree with much of what you say, you're told, but live in the real world, son. There's only so much immigration society can take. We're civilised people, but you should see our swinish voters. If we aren't mean, there will be a racist backlash.

The force of this argument is blunted by the generally tolerant welcome asylum seekers receive in British cities - despite the hard work of the Daily Mail, there's been nothing to compare with the fire-bombings of hostels in Germany. It is refuted by the desire of European Union governments to allow mass immigration.

The baby-boomers who are now in power have, somewhat carelessly, failed to produce enough sprogs to generate the wealth which might pay for their pensions. As this is a generation unused to privation, something must be done. Barbara Roche, the immigration Minister, who rants at gypsy mothers and presides over a system of relief which has brought asylum seekers to the edge of starvation, is therefore singing the positive virtues of economic migration.

With an ageing and declining population, Britain requires doctors, computer programmers and engineers as well as skivvies and navvies to do the dirty work. A Home Office report released last month said that about 150,000 immigrants from outside the EU will be needed every year for 20 years if the economic show is to be kept on the road. Roche was not reviled by the press. Even the Mail praised her. Prejudice must never threaten profits.

Everyone in power can empathise with people who move to make money. What they find intolerable and incomprehensible are those who run for their lives because they have made a stand on -- of all things! - political principle.

Livin' La Vida Loca with Big Willie Hague

Men don't come harder than Big Willie Hague. He's a fighting, drinking Cock of the North who can have you any day, with one hand behind his back.

But you must not go thinking that he doesn't experience spiritual moments. When he contemplates the big questions - What are we here for? Where is God? Why Archie Norman? - he turns to his pastor, Tim Montgomerie, the director of the Conservative Christian Fellowship.

Montgomerie's place at the right hand of Willie surprised many Tories. When he was elected leader, Hague had no noticeable religious convictions and boasted of his support for gay marriages, Notting Hill Carnivals, single mothers and sex before wedlock. Then he had a cool look at his activists and realised that many were in danger of being carted off to the nursing home after the next hard winter. The able-bodied minority he needed to enthuse contained a large number of God-botherers inspired by the ignorant and vicious Christian Coalition of the United States.

Montgomerie was quickly moved into Tory Central Office from where he has been correcting heretics who misinterpret 'compassionate conservatism'. Many in Britain 'heard the Ricky Martin songs and observed the multitude of ethnic faces at last year's Republican Convention' and thought that Bush and his British disciple were 'friendly to alternative lifestyles'.

'Compassionate conservatism,' he sternly reminds readers of the Renewing One Nation website, 'is actually the philosophical opposite of the social liberalism that attempts to enshrine indifference in legislation to forms of anti-social behaviour - eg, infidelity, minor crimes or drug abuse.'

If liberals are indifferent to these vices, should Conservatives enshrine their detestation of anti-social behaviour in legislation? If so, is Montgomerie sure that infidelity should be included in the list of sins? Is there not a danger that Conservative MPs - God and the News of the World alone know how many - could end up in the dock?